Carrie Underwood Hopes to Be Lauren Alaina’s ‘Big Sister’

Carrie Underwood is best known for her off-the-charts singing voice — have you heard her pipes in ‘Good Girl’? — but sometimes country music fans forget that the award-winning songstress is an accomplished songwriter, too. Typically, Underwood is one to record her own work, but her latest tune, ‘Eighteen Inches,’ will be fellow ‘American Idol’ alum Lauren Alaina‘s next radio single. Of course Underwood is excited to have Alaina record the song, but she’s also looking forward to helping the young starlet navigate her country music fame.

Underwood, who took home the crown on ‘American Idol’ in 2005, admits that she feels a bond with 17-year-old Alaina, who finished as the runner-up to country cutie Scotty McCreery during the show’s tenth season.

“All of us ‘Idol’ people — we’re all part of this club. All the people that have come to Nashville since their days on Idol — everybody’s genuinely talented and genuinely nice, and you know, Lauren’s no exception,” Underwood explains (according to Country Music Is Love). “I hope in some ways I can maybe be like big sister, you know? It’s like, whatever she’s gonna do, I’ve been there, I’ve done that. Maybe I can be like, ‘Stay away from this, and do more of this, and you know, take more pictures!’ But it’s always fun to just be able to talk to her and see that bright-eyed…and just reminds me of myself when I was just coming off of ‘American Idol.’”

We don’t have any doubt that Alaina will be happy to accept any words of wisdom offered up by one of her favorite country stars. The young starlet has turned to Underwood for inspiration before, namely when the two blonde country singers sang ‘Before He Cheats’ together on ‘Idol’s tenth season finale.

“Carrie Underwood has been a huge influence on who I am,” Alaina told the Hollywood Reporter. “She started out the same way I did, and she is someone that I look up to so much.”

Alaina plans to release ‘Eighteen Inches’ to the radio on July 16. Underwood is already excited to hear someone else singing one of her songs on the radio.

“I’ve had co-writes go on other people’s albums before, but this’ll be my first single. I’ve never had that before,” Underwood says. “It’s always been really cool when someone else wanted to record one of my songs that I helped write, but to actually possibly hear it on the radio at some point, that’s gonna be really cool.”

Tune in to your local country music station on July 16 to see what it sounds like when Underwood and Alaina combine their country music talents!